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SICE to deploy transit priority system in the Spanish city of Santander

SICE (Sociedad Ibérica de Construcciones Eléctricas), the Spanish systems integration and technology company, will implement a traffic light priority system for public transport in the country’s city of Santander.

Tesinger, a company belonging to the Perteo Group, has contracted SICE with the installation of its RBG1402-I2V Prioritization and Geolocation System, which will give priority to public transport vehicles on certain routes in Santander.

The company’s system is an integrated solution enabling intelligent wireless vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication between priority vehicles and traffic light control elements, with the aim of providing an overall optimized flow of vehicles. The main objective of the traffic light prioritization scheme is to prevent delays to transit vehicles caused by congestion at intersections controlled by traffic lights, in order to reduce travel times and improve the commercial service’s speed. The prioritization works are part of the Infrastructure Construction Project for the Metro-TUS implementation, Santander’s new high-speed bus service.

SICE’s system detects the exact location of the route’s municipal buses through a GPS geolocation system. When the tagged buses are near a traffic light that is about to turn red, the green phase of the signal increases its duration. This model will be deployed along the city’s main axis, where there are 17 sets of traffic signals to prioritize. The system features two devices:

An onboard unit (OBU), which is in charge of geotagging the vehicle and sending a pass-through demand to the infrastructure, while simultaneously reporting the vehicle’s movement and progress along its route;
The other device is installed in the traffic light control cabinet and manages the received information, allowing the controller unit to make and set the priority strategies for the intersection.

In addition, a complementary ‘queue jump’ system will be implemented at three sets of traffic lights, easing the incorporation of buses to a bus lane from a conventional lane.

The contract also includes the set-up of new crosswalks with traffic lights on the streets of Alcalde Vega Lamera, and on Valdecilla Avenue. For both the prioritization system and the new traffic lights, SICE’s MFU3000 traffic controller will be used, allowing total versatility in flow management and timings. It offers different priority levels, being able to be immediate or flexible depending on the vehicle that arrives at the intersection or the mobility policy that is being applied.